No Flame Burns Forever
by burnmedown
Summary: "Five times Jason visits Alana's grave, and one time he doesn't." Snippets of Jason's future, and Bravo's, as they find their way forward through loss and life.
1. I Have Remembered You

Happy SEAL Team Week! This story was written for day one.

Prompts used: Jason, romance

**Warning for multiple implied/discussed main character deaths** \- all future, but not all quite as far into the future as we would like.

Of course I managed to take the prompt 'romance' and turn it into heavy angst. In my defense, the show itself already turned Jason and Alana's romance into a tragedy, so I'm not entirely to blame for that. The other part? Yeah, sorry. My bad.

Story title from _Tompkins Square Park_ by Mumford & Sons; chapter title from _Words for Departure_ by Louise Bogan.

* * *

**1\. Amputation**

Jason goes to visit Alana's grave right after his first prosthetic fitting.

They didn't even let him try to walk with it this time; he just sat there, trying to get used to the weight at the end of his leg. Only six weeks after the amputation, it's amazing how quickly his body has adjusted to the sensation of there being nothing beneath his left knee except air. By contrast, the prosthesis felt bulky and strange.

Everyone keeps telling Jason that he will adjust. To the new leg, the new life. To being someone who will never operate again. He's trying to believe them, but it's still a little hard.

Some things you never truly adjust to - like, for example, the hole in the world where Alana is supposed to be. Sometimes you just have to go forward anyway, even if you're a decidedly unadjusted mess, because what other choice is there? The world will move on regardless.

Jason sits in his wheelchair in front of the grave, right where Ray parked him before wandering off to give him some privacy, and he stares at the headstone in silence for a while.

It's a nice day. Overcast, mild, with a gentle breeze that smells of spring. He misses her even more on days like this. It reminds him of when they were young. Reminds him that those moments were just as real as this one is, even though there's no way back to them now.

"Hey, Alana." When he finally speaks, his voice is soft and a little rusty. "You know, I really wish you were here. You would know what to do with... with this."

She would, too. She'd know when to back off and give him space to grieve the loss of his career, his purpose, his flesh and bone, and when to give him the proverbial kick in the ass and insist he stop feeling sorry for himself.

Ray tries, and he's mostly pretty good at it, but he's not Alana. He hasn't been twined into Jason's soul since childhood the way she was.

When Jason woke up in the hospital and truly realized the scale of what he'd lost, he was afraid that list would include his brothers. He feared that now that he couldn't operate anymore, he would fade from the forefront of their lives until he was nothing but a sad afterthought, someone they maybe called every few months when they got to feeling guilty.

So far that hasn't been the case at all, especially not with Ray, and Jason realizes he probably should have known better all along. His and Ray's friendship was never going to end just because of one paltry blown-off leg - and when Ray Perry wants to, he can be every bit as stubborn as Jason himself.

Ray clearly demonstrated that resolve during the early days following the explosion. Jason kept trying to push him away, to rip off the band-aid and get it over with, but every attempt only seemed to make Ray buckle down, as calm and immovable as a mountain facing down a breeze. Finally, when Jason's head was clear enough to receive it, Ray told him, "We are not leaving you, so stop trying to make us."

As far as he can tell, they mean it. Whenever they're not spun up, there's at least one of them in Jason's space. It's almost becoming annoying by this point.

Or would be, if he didn't appreciate it so much.

That end point the therapist warned him about, the moment when he has no choice but to figure out a life for Jason Hayes outside of Bravo One, came up a lot more suddenly than he'd expected.

Shifting in his wheelchair with a wince, Jason looks at the fresh flowers Ray helped him place at the foot of the headstone. Watching the petals ripple in the breeze, he says quietly, "You know, maybe it's for the best that my career as an operator ended this way."

It hurts to say that, to even think it, but deep down there's a part of him that knows it might be true.

It was never going to be easy to give up operating. He was always going to want to fight it, tooth and nail, to the bitter end. And if that's how it had played out, if he had kept pushing himself to stay in the field longer than his body could handle, there's a chance it could have ended a lot worse than this.

He could have gotten his brothers killed. There would be no coming back from that, not for him.

This hurts. This bright, sudden, bitter end; being an operator one moment and an amputee the next. But letting his control issues push him into causing the unnecessary death of someone he loves? That would have been so much worse, and now it won't happen. It's out of his hands.

Figuring out what comes next, that's going to be hard, but Jason feels tentatively hopeful that he'll find his way. It helps that his brothers have made it very clear that this isn't a path he'll be allowed to walk alone.

And hey, he's still alive to walk it. That wasn't a given when the IED blew his leg off and left him bleeding out.

Jason tries not to think about it too much, but he knows it was the closest he has ever come to death, at least in terms of injury. A lot of it is indistinct, a blur of terror and agony, but he does remember that Spenser made it to him first after the explosion, and stayed with him until the medevac arrived.

He recalls Clay putting on the tourniquet; yelling at him to stay awake; telling him with so much certainty that he was going to make it, that they would get him home alive.

The kid was right about that. Now it's time to figure out who the person they brought back actually is.

"I made it, Alana," Jason tells the silence. "I made it home."

From how many spins and deployments? God, he can't even hope to count them all. Alana was afraid every time that he wouldn't come back, but he always did. In the end, she was the one who left. It still doesn't make any sense.

"Don't worry about us, okay? We're good. We miss you, but we're good."

The certainty in that declaration feels dishonest, and they've been through too much together for him to lie to her now, so he qualifies it: "Or we will be, with time."

The words taste like a promise. One he'll do his best to keep.

Jason looks up, finds Ray, gives him a nod. As they leave the graveyard, it starts to rain, a soft, steady drizzle that washes the headstones clean.

**2\. Succession**

Jason comes to the graveyard straight from his workout, still drenched in sweat, phone clenched tightly in his hand. He paces for a while, thrumming with nervous energy, unable to even articulate exactly why he's here.

He doesn't limp much anymore. Sure, his stump still aches all night sometimes, probably always will, but this latest prosthesis is by far the most comfortable one he's had. Emma got it for him. Found some fancy, cutting-edge prosthetics company, and while Jason complained about the cost, it has turned out to be well worth it.

Finally, Jason manages to tone it down a little, planting himself at the foot of the grave. He hasn't been here in a while. The last batch of fake flowers are badly weathered, their petals turning gray. They were pretty at first. Now looking at them just makes him feel sad.

Sighing, Jason rubs his face. "Don't even know why I'm so keyed up," he admits. "They've been getting spun up without me for years now. And it's not like he isn't ready. I mean, he's maybe not completely - I don't think anyone ever is - but he's as close to it as he can be. As close as I was when I went out as Bravo One for the first time."

He pauses, flipping the phone over and over in his hand, letting wind and a rumble of distant thunder fill the silence for a minute. "He's good, Alana," he says. "He's gonna do great."

Jason believes that. He does. It's just that this is making him nervous, Bravo going out for the first time with Clay at the helm. More so than he expected.

Maybe it's partly that some part of Jason still thinks of Clay as a kid, even though he knows Spenser isn't. Knows the new Bravo One is skilled and experienced and competent, that he's a damn good leader and one of the best operators on the planet, that he can be trusted to handle whatever the job throws at him.

Doesn't matter. Jason still looks at him sometimes and can't help but see a cocky, overconfident kid, a true believer with blond curls and big blue eyes who looks all of about 12 years old when he's sad or sleeping.

And maybe part of Jason's nervousness stems from the fact that, for better or worse, Clay represents a big chunk of his legacy in DEVGRU.

Jason isn't arrogant enough to think he's responsible for teaching Spenser everything he knows; the kid had already shown his potential on Team 3 long before they ever even met. But he does know that Clay looked up to him, absorbed as much as he could, deliberately patterned his leadership style after Jason's, with maybe a bit of Ray mixed in there too.

What Clay knows and believes about leading a Tier One team, the way he approaches situations and handles his guys, a lot of that came from Jason. This feels a bit like having a residual piece of himself still out there somewhere downrange, running to the danger, responsible for the fate of an entire team, and yet Jason is no longer capable of consciously controlling or even affecting the outcome.

Spenser fulfilling his potential like this, it makes Jason proud. It makes him so goddamn proud, but it's also nerve-wracking, and causes him to itch with an awful sense of powerlessness he thought he had long since worked through.

All he can do is try to trust that he did the best he could, imparted the lessons he needed to impart, and that the kid can handle it from here.

Easier said than done.

Jason aims a wry smile at the headstone. "You probably just remember him as a reckless kid, huh? I was so sure back then that he was gonna end up getting his dumb ass killed." He shakes his head fondly. "How has it been so long?"

All at once, his throat closes up at that thought. How long it's been since he last saw her face, heard the sound of her voice, brushed his fingers casually over her skin. How many things she's already missed: with Bravo, with Emma and Mikey, with the world. Sunrises and sunsets, storms and eclipses, movies, books, new songs on the radio.

He coughs and pushes past the unexpected surge of grief. "Uh, you never even met Vic Lopez. You'd have liked him, I think. Good kid. Ray picked him out 'cause he thought he'd be good for Clay, and Spenser hated him at first, but it turned out Ray was right."

As usual. All of their lives probably would have been easier if they'd just learned to listen to Ray Perry more often.

"Lopez will make a solid 2IC. He's perceptive, thoughtful. He'll keep Clay from doing anything too crazy." Jason pauses. "Well, hopefully."

When Clay Spenser truly gets his heart set on pulling some reckless, death-defying stunt, there might not be a force in the universe that can stop him.

Hence the worry.

"I miss you," Jason whispers, shifting his weight off his leg that's starting to ache. The sky is darkening, wind picking up, thunder growing closer, but he lingers, staring down at the grave. "And I just... I just wanted to tell you, I guess. That Bravo is Clay's now. That the team is in good hands."

The intense, overwhelming blend of fear and fierce pride that's lighting him up from the inside, he just needed someone to share it with.

And somewhere deep down, his first instinct still told him to go to Alana for that.

Maybe it always will.

"I love you, baby." Clearing his throat, Jason adds softly, "Sleep well."

**3\. Life**

"Seven pounds, eight ounces. Twenty-one inches long. Born at 0423 yesterday morning."

The grave, predictably, doesn't respond.

Jason leans forward, scrubbing his hands through the bristles of his close-cropped, graying hair. "God, Alana. Were ours _ever_ that small?"

She would have known, would have remembered exactly how long they were and how much they weighed, but he can't.

He just remembers that they were tiny. Remembers Alana, sweaty and flushed and exhausted, staring down at them with love so fierce that it looked like it should have been able to move heaven and earth.

"He's good. Healthy. They named him Alexander. Big name for such a little guy." Jason's laugh catches in his throat. "Emma's fine too," he adds quickly, feeling strangely guilty for not thinking to clarify that right away, even though it doesn't matter that he didn't. Jason isn't even exactly sure what he believes about the afterlife, but he feels pretty confident that what Alana knows or doesn't know about her daughter's health, or about anything at all, isn't going to be affected by anything he says here.

Graves aren't for the dead; they're for the living. Jason knows that. He came here for himself. Because he needed to tell her about their grandson.

Because he looked at baby Alexander's face and saw Alana, the shape of her nose and the curve of her cheekbones, and the unexpected stab of grief amidst the joy felt like a physical thing, like it might explode out of his chest in a spray of blood and bone splinters.

"You would love him," Jason tells his dead wife.

She would, so much. He imagines her gazing at Emma and the baby with that same fierce, adoring expression, softened a bit by time. What would Alana even look like now? Silver threading her hair, more lines around her eyes?

She'd still be beautiful. He feels sure of that.

"Emma's guy, he's good. I didn't make it easy on him at first, which of course pissed Emma off, but he stuck it out. He really loves her and the baby. I think you'd like him." Jason pauses, watching his breath turn to plumes of steam in the cold air. "He's just... young," he says finally. "They both are. Hard to believe they're parents now, but I guess they're not that much younger than we were."

He worries, of course he does, but Emma is a grown woman with her own life. He has to let her live it. Ray keeps reminding him of that.

"I think Mikey might be happier than anybody." Jason's smile feels genuine now. "The baby went right to sleep on his chest, and I swear he almost exploded with pride. He's already got all these plans. Those two are gonna get into so much trouble together."

Mikey - he mostly goes by Michael now, but Jason still has trouble thinking of him that way - is doing well too. His dreams of playing pro hockey ended with a blown-out knee, but he found himself another passion to pursue, and now he's training to become a respiratory therapist. He is still quiet, enough so that people underestimate him sometimes, but it's underlaid with a sort of calm, steady confidence that reminds Jason of Alana.

"The guys were around, so they took me out to celebrate." Despite the chill, Jason feels warm when he thinks about how they still include him, make his joys their own, try to help bear the burden of his struggles.

Especially Ray and Naima, of course. They dropped by the hospital soon after the baby's birth, and Jason didn't miss how tightly Naima held Emma, or the tears on both women's faces when the hug finally ended.

Naima knew she couldn't replace Emma's mother, never tried to, but if Em ever needs advice or just someone to vent to who has been there, Jason knows Naima will answer every time. He will never be able to express how much he appreciates that. How lucky he and his kids are to have someone like Naima Perry in their lives, quietly shoring up the broken places.

The cold is starting to sink in, sharpening the ache in Jason's leg where the bone ends. He tucks his hands into his pockets. Before leaving, he says, "We're all good. Everybody's safe and healthy. You don't need to worry about us, okay?"

If she's still out there somewhere, he hopes she knows.

**4\. Loss**

Jason stiffly lowers himself to the lush grass. He sits for a long time, staring blankly, before managing to come up with even a single thing to say.

Finally he begins, "I don't know how any of this works. Death. I don't know if it's just... nothing, or if you're still out there somewhere, but just beyond our reach now." He pauses, focuses on breathing through the pain in his chest, sharp as a physical wound.

Jason has held the opinion all this time that graves are for the living, not the dead, but right now he needs that to not be true. He needs there to be some way she can hear him and understand.

"If you _are _still there, I guess you'll already know what went down. That, um..."

Jason's voice trails away into a broken rasp. He swipes a hand over his face, but his eyes are dry.

"Uh, if you can find him somehow, I would really appreciate it, Alana. He'll need a friendly face. The way things went down, he's gonna be hurting. Please just let him know that it's gonna be okay. Can you do that for me?"

He waits out a gentle silence. He doesn't expect a sign or anything - knows better than that - but he needs the time to get himself together before continuing.

"They said it was pretty quick. That he didn't suffer much." The words come out in a dull monotone. "I think that's supposed to make me feel better. Maybe it does a little." Jason blinks, clears his throat. "They said, too, that it wasn't... he didn't screw up or anything. Nobody did. They did everything right, by the book, but..."

Sometimes you do everything you're supposed to do, and then you kick down the wrong door and your life is over anyway. Just like that.

It could have happened to Jason so many times. It's partly luck that it never did.

Luck, and his brothers. That one time in Serbia, it was Clay's instincts and lightning reflexes that took Jason out of the path of the bomb at the last possible instant. He recalls that moment so clearly that he can almost still smell the smoke, hear the raining patter of smoldering wood chips falling around their heads.

Jason's story could have ended right then and there, but it didn't.

If only someone had been able to pull Clay out of the way three days ago. Just that single split second stands between a close call and a flag-draped coffin.

There's no going back and changing it now. There's only figuring out how to move on, which is proving a little harder than expected. This grief doesn't want to fit into a box yet. It weighs on Jason when he sleeps and when he wakes up; makes him feel like he's trying to move through deep water.

Against his will, his mind keeps circling back to how much he wishes he could have been there. Could have tried to _do something_ while Spenser was bleeding out, instead of being half a world away, not even aware anything was wrong.

Intellectually, Jason knows it wouldn't have made any difference if he'd been present. Nothing could have changed the outcome of those injuries. If they had occurred inside the best trauma center in the whole damn world, Clay still would have been dead within minutes.

It's just that Jason remembers what it was like when he lost his leg and almost his life. In that smeared blur of blood and smoke and chaos, his clearest memories are still of the hands deftly cinching the tourniquet and then gently cradling his head. The calm voice drawing his focus, pulling him back from the dark.

Clay was there for him the entire time. Jason just wishes he could have returned the favor.

No, that's not true. Deep down, what he really wants is to have stopped it from ever happening in the first place. He wishes he could have been first through that door, instead of the kid he mentored and trusted his legacy to.

He just doesn't understand why he's still here, growing old, when so many of the people he loves will never get to be anything but young - bright and brief and gone, their meteoric memory already fading from the world.

Most of the time Jason is able to live with those losses as the unchangeable background noise of his reality, but sometimes it all crashes over him like a wave and he feels like he might drown.

Today is one of those times.

It's just that he misses Alana so much, and there are so many things he needs to tell her about and get her advice on, and that list grows longer with each day that passes.

It's just that Jason saw Clay only a week ago, and he was alive and he _mattered_. From this moment on, Spenser will only ever recede further and further into the distance until finally there's nothing of him left; until he's no longer alive even in the memory of the last surviving person who ever saw him smile or knew the sound of his voice.

And, maybe most painful of all, it's just that now Clay won't get a chance to be the father he was so excited to be.

Baby Spenser is due in a little more than three weeks. Clay will never so much as look into his son's eyes.

Jason knows Clay was nervous too, haunted by memories of his own parents' failures, to which he responded by throwing himself at the task with the same single-minded determination he applied to every cause he ever took up.

He hounded Jason and Ray for advice. Read his way through an endless list of parenting books, and not just the standard 'how to change a diaper and when to take the kid to the doctor' variety; there were books on child psychology and communication and emotional development, because deep down Spenser always was a nerd who loved that kind of shit.

Jason is pretty sure there's still one of those books sitting in his apartment where Clay forgot it, marked halfway through with a bookmark, and the thought of it punches his ribs in.

The last thing in the whole damn universe Clay Spenser would have ever wanted to do was abandon his child. Regardless, this baby will be born into a world already marked by his father's absence and his mother's crushing grief.

If Clay's consciousness is still out there somewhere, gone beyond the veil into some unknowable part of the universe, he's going to be hurting so much over that.

"Just please find him, okay?" Jason asks again. "Tell him we've got it from here. Tell him we'll take care of his son. Tell him..." His voice cracks. "Jesus, Alana. I loved that kid."

He never said it while Spenser was alive, never would have even thought of saying it, but it's true.

Somehow the mouthy little shit Jason didn't want to draft became one of the people he loved, and now he's just one more in a long line of people Jason will have to figure out how to live without.

He'll get there. Grief is a well-worn path for him by now. But he knows it's gonna hurt like hell for a while.

There's some little part of that hurt, maybe, that's selfish, because Clay represented such a big piece of Jason's legacy, and losing him feels a bit like losing that legacy as well.

Outside this graveyard, the rest of the world awaits, and Jason knows he's needed. Sonny in particular is going to need all the help he can get to make it through these next few weeks, and Jason is one of the few people on earth who can almost always find a way through Sonny Quinn's defenses.

With a groan, Jason stands, pushing up to his knees and then getting his good leg under him first. He pauses, looking at a tree in the distance, and tells Alana, "I'm sorry. You're dead, and I'm still asking things of you. And... and I'm sorry I didn't do better by Clay. You can tell him that too, if you want."

Jason walks away. His eyes still feel so dry that they burn.

**5\. End**

For the first time since shortly after he lost his leg, more years ago now than he cares to remember, Jason arrives at Alana's grave in a wheelchair.

Ray didn't bring him this time, because Ray has been gone for almost a year now. He lived a good long life and died a death to match, quiet and peaceful and surrounded with love.

It still hurt so much, losing him. Like another piece of Jason's soul had been ripped out.

Still, the sun keeps coming up every morning, so he goes on.

All of Jason's children and grandchildren who still live nearby were busy, so William Spenser brought him to the graveyard today. Will is a good kid - well, man; he is long since grown, though Jason will always think of him as a kid. He has his father's unruly curls and bright smile and ever-curious mind, but he's lacking a lot of the shadows that Clay carried.

Will never joined the military. He's a university librarian, and he's happy. Clay would have been proud.

Once Will has drifted away to look at old headstones, Jason takes a careful breath and shifts in the wheelchair, wincing.

He's no stranger to pain. He is old now, and pain comes with the territory, especially for bodies that have been put through as much abuse as Jason's. This is different, though, gnawing and relentless. The meds help, but sometimes the pain still breaks through in sharp jolts that leave him gasping.

"I've got pancreatic cancer, apparently," Jason tells the grave. The weak sound of his own voice annoys him; it's just one more reminder of how frail he's become. "Stage 4. It's everywhere, pretty much. Won't be long now." He quirks a tiny smile. "I, uh, maybe ignored the symptoms for a little longer than I should have, but it probably wouldn't have really mattered in the end."

Jason pauses, looking up at the sky, which is blooming with billowing clouds like popcorn. He finds himself doing that a lot lately, noticing clouds, trees, birds, the play of sunlight on puddles. Not even sure why. Finding beauty in the world has never been his thing. It was Alana's.

After she was gone, he saw a lot less of it.

"Guess what I'm saying is, pretty soon I'll be finding out what it's like where you are." He exhales. "Finally."

He's ready. He's old and tired, and after a life characterized by one loss after another, it's finally his turn now. His turn to do the leaving, to fade out into the quiet and rest while others grieve.

It's been so long. He really never even expected to live this long.

He's grateful for those years, truly. Yeah, there was a lot of pain, but there was a lot of good too. He got to be there for his kids. Rock his grandbabies. Help raise Clay's son, who was technically born fatherless but inherited a committee of half a dozen fathers. He got to make a difference as an operator and then, reluctantly at first, as an ops chief.

There were romantic relationships, sometimes. None of them ever lasted.

None of them were ever Alana.

What the two of them had, it wasn't the sort of thing that ended with death. Everyone told Jason he needed to move on. He tried, and to a degree, did. He lived a life. Didn't lock himself away from the world. He just never loved anybody else like he'd loved her.

It's a damn miracle they ever found each other in the first place. Out of all the humans who ever lived, somehow they intersected in time and place, and what they had, for all its jagged edges, was beautiful. Now, after what feels like another whole lifetime in which he had no choice but to move on and leave her behind, it's finally his time to follow her into the dark.

Back together. That'll be good, he thinks. To see her again or to join her in rest, whichever it ends up being.

It's not a bad story just because it ends. All stories do.

Jason reaches out to brush his fingers over his wife's name, the inscription now worn a bit from decades of sun and wind and rain.

He remembers two lanky kids running down a gravel road, the girl in the lead, blond hair whipping around her laughter-bright face as she looked back and urged him on.

"Wait for me, okay?" He whispers. "I'll be there soon."

The crunching of leaves heralds Will's approach. Jason looks up to find the kid watching him, expression soft and fond and just a little bit sad. "You ready, Uncle Jason?"

Jason breathes out. Lets his hand fall away from the cold stone one last time.

"Yeah." He clears his throat. "Yeah, Will. Let's go home."

* * *

**1\. After**

"Hi, Mom."

Emma drops cross-legged to the carpet of patchy autumn grass. The grave barely looks any different than she remembers from when she was a teenager. Time moves on and the rest of the world grows and changes, but Alana Hayes is frozen here, an unfinished story cut off in the middle of a sentence.

Emma is older now than her mom ever got to be, but when she looks at the headstone, some part of her still feels like that furious teenager who wanted to burn the world down for daring to take her mother away from her.

"If you're still out there somewhere," Emma says, "I'm sure I don't have to tell you that Dad died this morning. You two will have already found each other." She laughs, wobbly and tear-clogged. "Probably already arguing about something stupid, right?"

God, she misses him so much already. She's grateful for all the years she had with him, and she's grateful that there was time to prepare for this, but it doesn't make it not hurt.

Middle-aged people's parents die. That's just a thing that happens. It doesn't seem unjust and out of place the way her mother's death did. Maybe that's why Emma was caught off guard by how lost and broken it still made her feel. How she sat at her father's bedside, cradled his cooling hand in her own, and felt like a little girl who needed to be held just one last time.

Emma plucks blades of grass and starts braiding them together, trying to distract herself before she dissolves into another round of crying. Her eyes are swollen enough already, and her head throbs.

"Dad did this so many times," she says. "I don't know how he held it together. How he kept going."

Because he didn't have any other choice. Because the world kept turning, so he got out of bed every morning and found a way to live. It's the same thing she'll do, even though this hurts so much.

Emma is well aware that her father was not always the picture of healthy coping skills or emotional intelligence. Sometimes he just locked things down, powered through by brute force alone, but in the end he always found his way. To everyone's surprise (including his own), he even figured out how to accept help when it became necessary.

He was far from perfect, but God, did she love him. She's so proud to have been his daughter.

She's proud that he weathered so much grief, saw so many horrors, and still managed to remain a man who could light up every time a grandbaby smiled at him.

She's proud that he pushed through Clay's death, through the irrational guilt and self-blame that tried to drown him afterward, and was able to transform that pain into motivation to be there for William. He even read some of the child psychology books Clay had left behind, to try to make sure he was doing things right, the way Clay would have wanted them done.

God, Clay. Emma initially thought of him as almost old, the way teenagers often view people nearing 30. Now, looking back, her throat aches with how young he was, when she first met him and even still when he died.

She's older now than he ever got to be, too.

"I wish you were here, Mom." Emma's voice wobbles. She misses her mother so intensely, as though the new grief is compounding the old, dragging it back to the surface, reopening the wounds. "There are so many things I want to talk to you about. I want you to meet the kids. I want to tell you about my career. I want to let you know that I understand now how much you did for us, and I'm sorry I didn't appreciate it more back then."

Her vision clouds, turning all the colors soft and blurry. She wipes at her eyes and continues, "I want you here, but if I can't have you, I'm glad you're with Dad now. The two of you always belonged to each other. I know it was hard, Mom, and I know maybe you never would have been able to stay married to him, but I don't think there was a single minute of his life when he didn't love you. It's a cliché, but you really were his soulmate."

Brushing at the grass stains on her fingertips, Emma gets to her feet. Mikey - _Michael_ \- is flying in, and she needs to meet him at the airport. He was a bit of a wreck on the phone, already worn down by long, harrowing shifts at work due to an RSV outbreak, and now facing this grief as well.

He needs his big sister right now, and maybe she needs him too. The two of them are the only people in the world who knew Jason and Alana Hayes as parents, with everything that entailed, and now they will have to figure out together how to be orphans.

Emma is so glad she has him, her quiet, steady little brother who spends his life helping children breathe.

"I love you, Mama," she says softly. "Tell Daddy I love him too, okay?"

For a moment she hesitates, looking back at the grave that will soon hold both of her parents.

They'll be together again, the way they should be.

Given all the pain and sadness, it's tempting to want to categorize their story as a tragedy, but at its heart Emma thinks it was always truly a love story.

And this, finally, is how it ends.


	2. Go Now With Blood on Your Lips

Clay's death, from his point of view. I didn't intend to write this brief extra scene, but it insisted on being written. I hurt my own feelings with it. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Chapter title from _Calling Long Distance_ by Matthew and the Atlas.

* * *

Clay Spenser kicks down a door and gets cut nearly in half by machine gun fire.

He knows almost instantly that his life is over. When he falls. When everything below his navel seems to disappear. When there's pain, but not nearly as much of it as there should be.

Any remaining sliver of hope vanishes the instant Clay sees Sonny's face.

Bravo Three is a lot grayer these days, starting to talk about retiring, but he's still Clay's best friend. Still gives him shit about how he'll always see him as a snot-nosed kid, even if Clay _is_ Bravo One now. Still questions him and challenges him and constantly drives him to be better.

Sonny has gone as pale as paper. Staying low, he crawls over to Clay, grabs his hand, and squeezes tight.

He doesn't plead, _Hang on._

He doesn't promise, _You're gonna be okay._

He leans in close to Clay's ear and tells him, over the rattle of gunfire as the rest of Bravo plus Alpha engage the enemy, "I am right here with you, buddy. You hear me? I'm gonna stay with you. You're not alone."

Sonny's hand trembles and tears spill down his cheeks, but his voice stays steady and calm. He's an anchor, like he's always been.

It takes nearly all the strength Clay has left, but he manages to hitch a tiny nod, raise the corners of his mouth in a faint smile. He tastes metal. The last of the pain is going now, drifting out to sea, distant and hazy.

He has just one regret, and it swallows him whole.

Clay drags a weak, stuttering breath into wrecked lungs. When he tries to whisper "William," more blood than air gurgles up his throat, but Sonny hears him. Sonny understands.

His face crumples, and he squeezes Clay's hand even harder, holding on so tight that Clay can feel it through the growing numbness.

"We'll take care of him," Sonny vows, his eyes bright and fierce. "We'll take real good care of your little guy, okay? I promise. We'll tell him all about you. You ain't got to worry about him none, Clay. He's gonna be just fine."

Clay manages another small nod. He's so tired. There's darkness bleeding into the corners of his eyes. He can't feel Sonny's hand anymore.

The baby is due in a month. Four weeks. If Clay could have just held him, even just once. It's the only thing in the world he wants right now.

_I never held my son. I never will._

The sharp grief of that thought is the only pain Clay can still feel.

All the plans he had, all the dreams of being a better father than his own. He'll be nothing now. A ghost. Old photographs and a handful of retold stories.

The last thing Clay sees, his failing vision drifting past Sonny's tearstained face, is the sky. It's a pale, gentle blue, like the blankets draped over the side of the waiting crib back home.

_I'm so sorry._

_I'm…_


End file.
